The Swamp

mister d wrote: ↑Fri Feb 19, 2021 11:27 am Texas is all sorts of stupid and right now most politicians could fuck a child on live TV and the outrage would be shouted down as "cancel culture".

However, that changed around a day after the severity of the disaster became apparent. Republican politicians and right-wing media, not content with run-of-the-mill blame-shifting, have coalesced around a malicious falsehood instead — the claim that wind and solar power caused the collapse of the Texas power grid, and that radical environmentalists are somehow responsible for the fact that millions of people are freezing in the dark, even though conservative Republicans have run the state for a generation.

This isn’t normal political malfeasance. It’s the energy-policy equivalent of claiming that the Jan. 6 insurrection was a false-flag Antifa operation — raw denial of reality, not just to escape accountability, but to demonize one’s opponents. And it’s another indicator of the moral and intellectual collapse of American conservatism.

It’s also true that extreme cold forced some of the state’s insufficiently winterized wind turbines to shut down, but as I said, this was happening to Texas energy sources across the board, with the worst problems involving natural gas.

Why, then, the all-out effort to falsely place the blame on wind power?

The incentives are obvious. Attacking wind power is a way for both elected officials and free-market ideologues to dodge responsibility for botched deregulation; it’s a way to please fossil fuel interests, which give the vast bulk of their political contributions to Republicans; and since progressives tend to favor renewable energy, it’s a way to own the libs. And it all dovetails with climate change denial.

But why do they think they can get away with such an obvious lie? The answer, surely, is that those peddling the lie know that they’re operating in a post-truth political landscape. When two-thirds of Republicans believe that Antifa was involved in the assault on the Capitol, selling the base a bogus narrative about the Texas electricity disaster is practically child’s play.

And if you’re expecting any change in the policies that helped cause this disaster, don’t count on it — at least as long as Texas remains Republican. Given everything else we’ve seen, the best bet is that demonization of wind power, not a realistic understanding of what actually happened, will rule policy going forward.

Johnnie wrote: ↑Fri Feb 19, 2021 4:06 pm Dude, he left his dog alone?!?

What the fuck. I don't even have a dog and this is infuriating.

He might actually get got because being a dog owner is bipartisan.

(His dog is named - I shit you not - Snowflake.)

P.D.X. wrote: ↑Fri Feb 19, 2021 4:28 pm Not that strange except... it's in a winter storm where power/heat is in flux and houses are literally freezing.

Steve of phpBB wrote: ↑Tue Dec 01, 2020 12:13 pm

Johnnie wrote: ↑Fri Feb 19, 2021 4:06 pm Dude, he left his dog alone?!?

What the fuck. I don't even have a dog and this is infuriating.

He might actually get got because being a dog owner is bipartisan.

(His dog is named - I shit you not - Snowflake.)

There is little establishment support for Ms. Chase, who last month was censured by her State Senate colleagues and stripped of committee assignments after she called the rioters at the Capitol “patriots.” She has recently been required to sit in a plexiglass box after refusing to wear a mask during Senate sessions. Ms. Chase has called it her “square of freedom.”

L-Jam3 wrote: ↑Mon Feb 22, 2021 4:31 pm

psunate77 wrote: ↑Mon Feb 22, 2021 8:27 pm

L-Jam3 wrote: ↑Mon Feb 22, 2021 4:31 pm

By 2024 all this will be forgotten..

DaveInSeattle wrote: ↑Mon Feb 22, 2021 8:50 pm

psunate77 wrote: ↑Mon Feb 22, 2021 8:27 pm

L-Jam3 wrote: ↑Mon Feb 22, 2021 4:31 pm

By 2024 all this will be forgotten..

If any candidate going against Cruz, including the Republicans running for President, let him forget this they should be sued for political malpractice.

Johnson claimed that the “great majority” of protesters had a “jovial, friendly, earnest demeanor” and blamed the violence that turned deadly on “plainclothes militants, agent provocateurs, fake Trump protesters, and disciplined uniformed column of attackers.”

Pruitt wrote: ↑Wed Feb 24, 2021 8:19 am Critics slam Sen. Ron Johnson for unfounded claim that ‘fake Trump protesters’ led riots

Johnson claimed that the “great majority” of protesters had a “jovial, friendly, earnest demeanor” and blamed the violence that turned deadly on “plainclothes militants, agent provocateurs, fake Trump protesters, and disciplined uniformed column of attackers.”

L-Jam3 wrote: ↑Wed Feb 24, 2021 9:04 am I get they wouldn't do it because they don't want to risk losing access, but it'd be nice once in a while if reporters made pushed back more. Such as "Senator, we all saw and heard video of the Capitol attack. Where are you getting the evidence of your claim that they were false Trump supporters?" And if he says he heard it somewhere, keep pressing. Then simply repeat it back. "So Senator, you are claiming that counter the video evidence we all saw, some guy somewhere told you that he heard the protestors were really fake Trump supporters. Do I have that correct?"

The Sybian wrote: ↑Wed Feb 24, 2021 9:37 am I did not independently confirm. I do wonder if the insurrectionists are insulted by being labelled as Antifa.

L-Jam3 wrote: ↑Wed Feb 24, 2021 10:35 am they'll fold faster than the Flash on laundry day.

brian wrote: ↑Wed Feb 24, 2021 12:51 pm If he was a Democrat he would have been executed by now.